


quite some time now

by ghosthunter



Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: Fake Dating, M/M, kenora trope city
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-25
Updated: 2018-10-25
Packaged: 2019-08-05 13:59:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16368917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghosthunter/pseuds/ghosthunter
Summary: So when Mike’s friend calls him to ask why he RSVPed to the wedding with no plus one, it’s honestly because he’s alone and there’s no one he wants to go with. But there are times when your friends don’t want to hear that you’re all alone and you’re coming to their wedding by yourself, and Mike’s friends aren’t taking no for an answer.





	quite some time now

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ancientdeceiver](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientdeceiver/gifts).



> happy birthday yesi. i'm sorry i'm not more familiar with them, so i couldn't give you something better. i hope you enjoy it and i hope you have a fantastic birthday. consider this like trope cupcakes - why have one when you can have MANY?
> 
>  
> 
> thanks to jarka for the quick and dirty carts/richie primer and for the beta. and to wade for saying "actually, that wouldn't fucking work" and making me go home and rethink my life.

It goes way back.

It goes back to the draft and to the Flyers and it’s a mess, until it’s not. And the only reason it’s not a mess anymore is because they’re not around each other anymore. And that sucks.

So when Mike’s friend calls him to ask why he RSVPed to the wedding with no plus one, it’s honestly because he’s alone and there’s no one he wants to go with. But there are times when your friends don’t want to hear that you’re all alone and you’re coming to their wedding by yourself, and Mike’s friends aren’t taking no for an answer.

“What happened to your boyfriend? That Jeff guy?” his friend asks. Mike sighs, a harsh puff of air out through his nose.

“He was never my boyfriend,” Mike says, because it’s the truth.

“Okay, well, that seems fake,” he can hear the groom saying in the background of the call. He must be on speakerphone.

“Well, he wasn’t,” Mike says.

“You… were in love with him,” Mike’s friend says, voice confused. And maybe that’s true. Mike’s pretty sure that’s not true. Even if it was, at one point in time, true, it’s not true anymore, not with Carts still playing hockey down in LA and Mike in Kenora. It’s been over for years now.

“I think you got the wrong idea,” Mike says after a while.

“Well, bring someone. I’m not letting you in if you don’t bring someone!”

The line goes dead. Mike hates his fucking friends.

 

It’s weird when Mike calls out of the blue and even weirder when he asks Jeff to come spend the weekend in Kenora and go to a wedding with him. Because Mike needs a date to a wedding and there’s no one who will go with him - or who he wants to go with him? - that he can ask besides Jeff?

More fool Jeff, because Jeff says yes, packs a duffel bag and a suit and heads to Canada for the weekend.

 

“Thanks for coming,” Mike says, when he picks Jeff up from the airport on Saturday morning.

“Yeah sure,” Jeff says. “Anytime.”

Mike thinks that’s probably not true, but he’s glad that Jeff is there anyway. They’re driving to the hotel to check in that afternoon before the wedding that night, giving them plenty of time to catch a nap and catch up and change into their suits.

It’s just that once they get to the hotel and check in, there’s only one bed. They’re standing in the doorway, and Jeff is frowning, and Mike just starts laughing. He knows how this happened. The matchmaking is total bullshit.

Yet here he is, about to share a bed with Jeff for the night.

“Well, I get the side by the window,” Jeff says, and that’s that. He drags his bag in and puts it down on the far side of the room, hangs his suit in the wardrobe. Mike sends a text message, knowing that his friends probably won’t even see it, too focused on getting ready for the wedding. 

Mike kicks his shoes off and flops down on his back on his side of the bed. “You’re cool with this?” he asks.

“Not like we’ve never shared a bed before, Richie,” Jeff tells him, rummaging through his backpack until he pulls out a phone charger and a pair of headphones.

“I guess,” Mike says. Jeff is right, of course. That feels like a whole lifetime ago.

Mike sets an alarm and they both stretch out on the bed without much preamble. Jeff has been up since early, traveling, and Mike’s always been a big fan of a nap.

“Why did you pick me?” Jeff asks, just as Mike is about to doze off. “Of all the people you know, who could have come here.”

Mike is quiet. There were a few people he might have called. His friend is the one who had brought up Jeff, and once he had Jeff in his mind, there was no one else he could think of. He’s glad, now that they’re sharing a room and sharing a bed.

“I don’t know,” Mike finally says. Then, truthfully, “Sometimes I miss you.”

“Just sometimes?” Jeff asks, and Mike turns his head to see Jeff grinning in the grey light filtering through the cracks in the hotel room’s blackout curtains.

“Fuck off,” Mike tells him, and rolls onto his side, putting his back to Jeff.

The bed trembles slightly with the force of Jeff’s snickering behind him, and eventually Jeff shifts and slides up behind Mike, throwing an arm over him. “So you got a room with one bed so you could have me spoon you again?” Jeff asks him, his voice suddenly extremely close to Mike’s ear, his breath hot against Mike’s neck. Goosebumps radiate out over Mike’s whole entire goddamn body, and he guesses he’s an idiot after all.

He’s still in love with Jeff.

Fuck.

“Get off of me,” Mike says, because that’s what the reaction should be, not rolling over into Jeff’s arms the way he suddenly wants to. That would be a stupid move. Stupid Jeff is snickering again, and just when he thinks he’s too old for wrestling teammates - even old teammates - in hotel rooms, here he is again, grappling with Jeff across the mattress.

“I thought we were gonna take naps,” Jeff asks, looking down at Mike from where he has Mike pinned to the mattress. Mike’s not exactly out of shape, but Jeff is definitely more in shape. He’s not even breathing hard, where Mike is a little sweaty, a little out of breath.

A little bit hard.

Double fuck.

“You started this shit,” Mike tells him, trying to think fast for a way to get away without making his predicament more noticeable and at the same time hoping that Jeff hasn’t already noticed. “Let me up.”

Jeff flops over onto his back easily enough, and Mike slaps him hard, open palmed on the stomach. “Let me take a fuckin’ nap,” he tells him, over the noise of Jeff’s grunt.

Jeff snores when he sleeps.

 

The wedding is beautiful.

Mike doesn’t love going to weddings, truthfully, if only because a lot of the time he ends up going to them alone or because also they remind him about love and he doesn’t have anyone he loves like that. Except, as he’s sitting there, next to Jeff, watching his friends tie the knot, he thinks he would probably do this.

With Jeff.

Because he’s fucked.

The cocktail hour can’t come soon enough, then the reception, and he spends too much time playing around in the photobooth with his newlywed friends and Jeff ends up sitting at their table with people he doesn’t know, looking bored.

“Go make it up to him,” Mike’s friends tell him, because they are bad influences. “Ask him to dance, get him a drink, take him back to your room.”

“It’s not like that,” Mike tries to protest, but he wants it to be like that. He’s never been more sure of anything in his life.

“Go.”

So Mike does, resting a hand on Jeff’s shoulder as he slips into the seat next to him, slides a drink in front of him. “Come dance with me,” he says.

Jeff sips the drink, looking at Mike for a moment. “First you invite me to this wedding, get us a room with only one bed, and now you’re bringing me a drink and asking me to dance?” Jeff asks him. “It’s almost like you’re trying to get into my pants.”

Mike takes a deep breath, and he goes for it. What does he have left to lose? “If I was, would this be working?” he asks.

Jeff laughs, tipping his head back. Mike wants to press his mouth along Jeff’s jawline then. He thinks maybe he could, and no one would care.

“Let’s go dance,” Jeff says.

An uptempo track transitions into something slower, and the dance floor crowds with couples, the newlyweds in the center. Mike grins and loops his arms around Jeff’s neck as they lean in close together, and Jeff’s arms twine around his waist. It’s not graceful, but they sway together to the music.

“I’m glad you called me,” Jeff says, after a while, his head dipped down, leaned close to Mike’s ear.

“I’m glad you came,” Mike says.

“You wanna get out of here? Go back to the room?” Jeff suggests. His thumbs are rubbing circles on Mike’s back. Mike wants to lean in against him and never move.

“Yeah,” Mike says.

It’s taken them a long time to get here. Mike thinks it wouldn’t surprise them if they made out in the elevator on the way back to their hotel room, tugging each other’s shirts loose from their pants, loosening ties and tearing buttons away.

But it’s not like that. It’s been so long that there’s no urgency, not tonight, not for this. It’s standing in the elevator, hand in hand, Mike’s thumb rubbing against Jeff’s hand as they wait for the elevator to reach their floor. It’s soft kisses while they slowly strip each other out of their shirts, the moment taken to put everything away, hang everything up.

If they’d done this when they were young, when they were in Philadelphia, it would have been rushed, and neither of them would have been satisfied. Instead, now - it’s slow lazy kisses on the bed, slotting their bodies together. Jeff’s hands tangle in Mike’s hair as they kiss each other breathless, as Mike mouths his way along Jeff’s jaw.

They kiss each other until Mike is so hard he feels like he’s going to die, until he can’t stand it anymore and rocks his hips up, tries to get more friction to his cock. Jeff sighs then, leaves his hands tangled in Mike’s hair as Mike reaches between them to jerk them both off.

Neither of them move after, sweaty and panting and Jeff kisses him.

“I think we waited too long to do that,” Jeff says. Mike laughs, breathless.

“Change your flight. Stay with me a few more days,” Mike says.

“Here in this hotel room?” Jeff asks.

“Right here in the wet spot, asshole,” Mike says, laughing.

Jeff laughs, and pinches Mike’s ass before he rolls off the bed and heads into the bathroom.

**Author's Note:**

> on twitter @notedgoon


End file.
